Military jokes might be sometimes quite blunt, e.g. British soldiers used to make a joke about the Distinguished Service Order military decoration, to say of a comrade wounded down the belly that he had received DSO, DSO meaning "Dickie Shot Off."
In other jokes however, the lack of seriousness is more subtle. Often these are in-jokes and not everyone understands them; e.g., the following reference to "Camouflage Uniform Wear Policies":
*Marines: Work uniform, to be worn only during training and in field situations.
*Navy: Will not wear camouflage uniforms, they do not camouflage you on a ship.
*Air Force: Will defeat the purpose of camouflage uniforms by putting blue and silver chevrons and colorful squadron patches all over them.
Cadences often contain humorous lyrics, or can be modified to be humorous. Examples:
*My girl's got big ol' hips / Just like two battleships...
*They say that in the Army, the biscuits are mighty fine / One rolled off the table, and killed a friend of mine...
Sometimes the joke is made by civilians about the military. In the Philippines during President Ferdinand Marcos martial law years, Chief of the Armed Forces General Fabian Ver was a feared figure. In the midst of the tense times, Filipino people used to joke that the general was so fiercely loyal that if Marcos would have ordered him to jump out of the window, General Ver would have saluted and said, "Which floor, sir?"
Comic strips
The best-known comic strip about military life is Mort Walker's long-run Beetle Bailey, set in a United States Army military post where a number of inept characters are stationed. Also notable are George Baker's Sad Sack and Dave Breger's Private Breger. When Roy Crane created the Buz SawyerSunday strip, he put the emphasis not on Sawyer but on his comedic sidekick Sweeney. Half Hitch, Hank Ketcham's strip of Navy humor, was distributed by King Features Syndicate from 1970 to 1975. Maximillian Uriarte's Terminal Lance began in 2010 and continues to run online and in the Marine Corps Times. Military humor in comic books includes the All Select Comicscomic book feature "Jeep Jones" by Chic Stone.
Films
Among the oldest military comedies in film are the Flagg and Quirt films. Comedy films about World War II include Buck Privates, Stalag 17, Mr. Roberts, Kelly's Heroes and Catch-22. The film Forrest Gump offers a glimpse of military humor when portraying Gump as a soldier in training and later fighting in Vietnam.
Television
Some comedies, like the Don't Call Me Charlie TV series, are totally devoted to the military theme. The fourth series of the British sitcomBlackadder, known as Blackadder Goes Forth, revolves around the life of Edmund Blackadder in the trenches of World War I.
Books
Notable books include Shel Silverstein's Grab Your Socks, Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Reader's Digest's Humor in Uniform is a collection of short true anecdotes depicting amusing experiences in the armed forces. In 1941, according to editor Harold Hersey, there were about 350 Army camp newspapers. Three years later, when they had expanded to "hundreds and hundreds", he compiled his collection of camp newspapers cartoons, More G.I. Laughs. In 2002, Hyperion published Kilroy Was Here: The Best American Humor from World War II by Charles Osgood. Publishers Weekly reviewed:
Magazines
Widely circulated on military bases during the 1950s, Charley Jones Laugh Book was an outgrowth of earlier military humor publications. During World War II, Jones sold Latrine Gazette on Army bases, so successful that he recycled the material into another publication, HEADliners, aimed at Navy men, and then launched Charley Jones Laugh Book as a nationally distributed magazine in 1943. Captain Billy's Whiz Bang began in a similar fashion after World War I.
Military humour in the SADF was to be found less in jokes than in humorous expressions and comments. It is sometimes difficult to express their force, since most of it is in Afrikaans, and the play on words does not always translate into English without explanation. SADF humour can be very vulgar, but is never blasphemous. It often comes from the mouths of Instructor Corporals addressing trainees:
”Moenie vir my loer nie, ek is nie 'n hoer nie!” – “Don't look at me, I'm not a whore!”
”As my vrou net kon sien hoe jy my aankyk, sou sy jou oë uitkrap!” – “If my wife could only see you looking at me like that, she'd scratch your eyes out!”
”As jy so stadig fok as wat jy aantrek, sal jy nooit pa word nie!” – “If you fuck as slowly as you dress, you'll never become a father!”.
”Ek sal jou oog uitsuig en dit voor jou uitspoeg sodat jy self kan sien watse groot poes is jy!” – “I'll suck out your eye and spit it out in front of you so that you can see for yourself what a great cunt you are!”
“Kaptein” became “Kaktein” which translated neatly into English as “Craptain.”
A 2nd Lieutenant, who wore one pip on each shoulder and was usually a National Serviceman, was known as a “plastic pip.”
In Pretoria, there is a street called “Proes Straat”, where a number of important military buildings were located. “Proes” means to splutter in Afrikaans, but if the “r” is removed the resulting word is the Afrikaans equivalent of the American slang “pussy”. Thus Proes Straat was jokingly referred to in English as “Crunt Street”.
Soldiers on permanent light duty, classified G3 or G4, were known as “Siekes, lammes en dooies” or “Ligte vrugte”. This last expression is rhyming. It is a twisting of "light duty" in Afrikaans. Apart from the "light" allusion, it has no actual significant meaning.
Like any other army, there were also standard slang terms for equipment and uniforms:
The large duffle-type bag in which a soldier carried his kit was known as a “balsak” ;
A knife, fork and spoon-set was dubbed a “pikstel” ;
A ”pisvel” was a mattress cover;
“Skrapnel” referred to overboiled, diced frozen vegetables;
"Ballas bak" referred to sun-tanning during periods of inactivity on the SWA/Namibia Border;
A “pislelie” was a broad, funnel-shaped tube set into the ground for urinating, on the same Border;
A “go-kart” was a portable toilet seat with a lid, also for the Border. Anything up to ten were placed in double rows within a single, hessian surrounded enclosure with no individual privacy, hence the reference to go-kart races.
The various corps had humorously insulting names for each other. Amongst others:
“Vleisbomme” were paratroopers;
"Kanondonkies" were the Artillery;
"Bebliksemde donkies" referred to the Technical Services Corps, whose badge was a rearing silver stallion in front of a golden lightning bolt;
Infantry wore a golden Springbok head on their berets. This led them to be called "bokkop", a not too subtle reference to the Afrikaans word "fokop" ;
The Air Force were known as "budgies" after their eagle symbol;
The Administrative Services Corps was the Administratiewe Dienskorps in Afrikaans. Its abbreviation, ADK, gave rise to the nickname "Altyd Deur die Kak" ;
Later, when the ASC was split up and its beret colour changed from blue to an odd yellowish brown, the new colour was described as "kapoen", a telescoping of the Afrikaans words "kak" and "pampoen".
There were also soft-covered cartoon books satirizing army life. An example is one based on the old SADF adage, “There are only two sizes in the SADF; too big and too small.” It shows a squad of new recruits, all wearing uniforms and boots far too big or small. In the middle is a soldier with perfectly fitting gear. The Corporal is shouting at him: “What’s the matter with you, soldier? How come everything fits so perfectly?”
Brazil in World War II
The Brazilian dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas was known for its unwillingness to get more deeply involved in the Allied war effort. By early 1943 a popular saying was: "It's more likely for a snake to smoke a pipe, than for the BEF to go the front and fight.". Before the FEB entered combat, the expression "a cobra vai fumar" was often used in Brazil in a context similar to "when pigs fly". As a result, the soldiers of the FEB called themselves Cobras Fumantes and wore a divisional shoulder patch that showed a snake smoking a pipe. It was also common for Brazilian soldiers to write on their mortars, "The Snake is smoking...". After the war the meaning was reversed, signifying that something will definitively happen and in a furious and aggressive way. With that second meaning the use of the expression "a cobra vai fumar" has been retained in Brazilian Portuguese until the present, although few of the younger generations realize the origin of the expression.
